Chocolate Babka

Laden with chocolate, butter, and old-world charm, this babka is luscious served as dessert, with coffee, or as breakfast. While baking, the rich dough becomes incredibly tender, so it pulls apart in buttery pieces that melt in your mouth.

Preparation

Stir together warm milk and 2 teaspoons sugar in bowl of mixer. Sprinkle yeast over mixture and let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes. (If yeast doesn't foam, discard and start over with new yeast.)

Add 1/2 cup flour to yeast mixture and beat at medium speed until combined. Add whole eggs, yolk, vanilla, salt, and remaining 1/2 cup sugar and beat until combined. Reduce speed to low, then mix in remaining 2 3/4 cups flour, about 1/2 cup at a time. Increase speed to medium, then beat in butter, a few pieces at a time, and continue to beat until dough is shiny and forms strands from paddle to bowl, about 4 minutes. (Dough will be very soft and sticky.)

Scrape dough into a lightly oiled bowl and cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rise in a draft-free place at warm room temperature until doubled in bulk, 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

Assemble babkas with filling:

Line each loaf pan with 2 pieces of parchment paper (1 lengthwise and 1 crosswise).

Punch down dough with a lightly oiled rubber spatula, then halve dough. Roll out 1 piece of dough on a well-floured surface with a lightly floured rolling pin into an 18- by 10-inch rectangle and arrange with a long side nearest you.

Beat together yolk and cream. Spread 2 1/2 tablespoons softened butter on dough, leaving a 1/2-inch border all around. Brush some of egg wash on long border nearest you.

Sprinkle half of chocolate evenly over buttered dough, then sprinkle with half of sugar (2 tablespoons). Starting with long side farthest from you, roll dough into a snug log, pinching firmly along egg-washed seam to seal. Bring ends of log together to form a ring, pinching to seal. Twist entire ring twice to form a double figure 8 and fit into one of lined loaf pans.

Make another babka with remaining dough, some of egg wash, and remaining butter and chocolate in same manner. Chill remaining egg wash, covered, to use later. Loosely cover pans with buttered plastic wrap (buttered side down) and let babkas rise in a draft-free place at warm room temperature until dough reaches top of pans, 1 to 2 hours. (Alternatively, let dough rise in pans in refrigerator 8 to 12 hours; bring to room temperature, 3 to 4 hours, before baking.)

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F.

Brush tops of dough with remaining egg wash. Bake until tops are deep golden brown and bottoms sound hollow when tapped (when loaves are removed from pans), about 40 minutes. Transfer loaves to a rack and cool to room temperature.

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Reviews

Beautiful dough. I have a tiny convection oven and split up the dough into quarters, it worked really well. I used milk chocolate and white, and I highly recommend making it with white chocolate (but not sprinkling the sugar on top of the chocolate like in the recipe, otherwise it may be too sweet).

It's a wet, sticky dough as noted, so I rolled it on parchment paper to minimize the amount of extra flour needed and help with the rolling. Mine came out a bit mushy (I think I didn't bake it long enough) but so good.

I made this today and the dough is amazing!! It is buttery & reminds me of a brioche dough. The dough was sticky when I turned it out of the mixer but I kneaded it for a minute or so adding flour until it was spongy. It was easy to roll out and fill. I used ghirardelli chocolate that I had broke down into small pieces in my food processor. I did add extra chocolate after reading other recipes and it was the wrong thing to do. The chocolate overpowers the buttery dough which is a star on its own. Another review mentioned the outside crust was too hard-- I just rubbed the top with a stick of butter when it came out if the oven-- this creates a soft crust. I will make thus again with less chocolate and different fillings 🍽

Soooo good. I made this for the first time last year and then made it 2 more times before the end of the holiday season. Just looking up the recipe again for this year. The dough is beautiful to work with.

This is a very time-consuming recipe (wait-time) but even if you end up killing the yeast, your two loaves will be gone in days. I used 60% cacao chips (melted with the butter and sugar 30 seconds in the microwave) and it was absolutely perfect. It is the softest bread I've made- it practically drips while you pick it up so be careful transporting it from your counter to your pan. Easier if you roll it on the thing you're baking it in. Wow, I'm a terrible baker and this made me look like a 4 star cook. This recipe is going in my recipe box.

First time making babka. I found the dough easy to work with. I didn't handle it much, scraped from mixer bowl to rising bowl, and from rising bowl to floured marble slab. Baked, the bread was delicious. I didn't love how the chocolate behaved, settling a bit and creating large masses of chocolate in the finished loaves. Smitten Kitchen has a recipe where the chocolate is melted with butter and has cocoa/powdered sugar added to make a spreadable paste. I'm going to try that next time with this dough.

I just made this recipe today. It was my first time making Babka. Before that, I've only eaten NYC's babka. I followed the direction to the letter. It was easier than I thought and the results were delicious. I will be making this again and again. Yum!

LOVE this recipe! My only addition...the 6 1/2 hours time it takes to make this should be amended to include the extra hour of clean up! I also needed to add more flour for this dough to be workable, and the rolling pin made it very difficult. I formed the 10x18 inch base by flattening with my hand for the second loaf. MUCH easier...

Try making the dough in your bread machine. Cooking Light has the same recipe on their site and it works very well in a bread machine. No mess and the dough is perfect every time. So much easier and the results are always consistently excellent. It also works well with Cinnamon mini-chips.

LOVED this! Took a few times making it to get the dough right...it's stickier than bread dough. Also, do NOT use chocolate chips....it produces chocolate pockets rather than a larger spread of chocolate taste. This is a great recipe...but be prepared to get your hands and working surface MESSY! Freezes well if you can manage to get the second loaf put away before it's inhaled....

wonderful recipe, used mixer so it was easy. Amount of flour was correct, maybe those who had too sticky of a dough didn't mix enough or were expecting a regular dough consistency? When dumped on the floured board and rolled it, it was smooth and easy to work with. Makes a great gift!

I love this recipe! I have never baked with yeast before but followed the directions exactly and it turned out perfect! While I am a chocolate lover I look forward to trying this dough with other fillings like an apricot cream cheese recipe I found or the brown sugar filling, but I will always use this dough recipe.

I too thought the dough was difficult to work with and I'm an experienced baker and used to working with dough. I had to add quite a bit off flour to make it workable. I didn't have parchment paper so I lined the pans with foil and sprayed with pam. The babkas turned out good. I will make these again.

Wonderful! Yes, the dough is very sticky so just don't do much with it. I used a well-floured surface and rolling pin. Rolled it slowly once and then flopped it in the pan. It wasn't messy because there was little handiwork with it.

Great recipe but baking with yeast is not for the novice baker or someone who lacks the patience to wait for rising dough. When reading the other reviews, the low fork ratings are all coming from people who made mistakes during the process or perhaps never baked before and are better at cooking.

OMG...AMAZING!!My mom used to buy and make this when I was a kid, I was so craving it and came across this recipe and decided to try it - all I can say is WOW - tastes exactly how I remember, I didnt use the Chocolate filling as the Babkas we ate were Cinnamon,sugar and Sultanas,so used them as a filling and worked really well! Really easy recipe to follow, thank you for putting it up!

The taste was good. The dough was unworkable with the amount of flour given in the recipe. I had to add about 1 more cup of flour and used quite a bit to to roll the dough out. Even after that I had to sort of drop it in the pan

Loved this! I can't wait to make variations. I followed the recipe, but didn't shave the chocolate, just left it in chunks. I told my kids it was challah with chocolate inside -- and it was! It looks beautiful too.

I have baked this cake a few times over the last 6 months and it comes out great every time. I don't use a mixer to prepare the dough, its soft enough that I can mix it by hand. After it rises, if it is still too soft to work, I add more flour (sometimes as much as 1/2 a cup). For the filling I have used Nuttela, tahini + honey, jam + sugar + cinamon... everything works.

I was not impressed by this bread. but that's probably because I made some mistakes along the way! This was super dry....even though I baked it for the time suggested, I think I will have to significantly cut down the baking time, by maybe 5-10 minutes. Also, I used bittersweet Callebaut chocolate, finely chopped, as suggested. Not only was this almost impossible to grate- the hardest part of the recipe in fact, I would prefer a sweeter chocolate. I also found the texture very powdery. I wish I had used Ghiradelli chocolate bars as I had initially intended. This dough was very soft but I did not find rolling or shaping it too difficult. I will try this recipe again and hope for better result. Also, mine was more like a cake and I was hoping for a Brioche type dough. My family really like it though!

I can't exactly rate the recipe yet as I haven't baked it yet. I'm sure it is delicious but I don't know what I did wrong. I followed the dough recipe exactly, les it rise and it was still so thin and impossible to work with. I added extra flour and attempted to roll it out on an EXTREMELY floured surface. With all of the flour on my hands and surface/rolling pin, I'm sure it added another 1/4 cup! It was SO difficult to roll! I can't understand what happened. Is this the consistency every one else was working with?